Ubuntu Repair Install

WAJeff · Post by **WAJeff** » 03 Jan 2008, 10:11

Hi guys

I feel like a real no0b posting this, but here it goes....
OK, so yesterday I was playing around with Ubuntu, and was trying to install angry ip scanner, was following a guide of these forums. It said copy the .jar file into /opt dir... I couldnt do that, so after a few attempts I logged into root, and decided to change all the permissions on the folders on the Filesystem, which in turn screwed up my PC. I've tried booting into repair mode (I think thats what its called) but nothing happening...

I cant boot into Ubuntu anymore Is there any way to either restore permissions back to default, or do a repair install with Ubuntu?

Post by **Stuart** » 03 Jan 2008, 13:11

*cough*
Vista
*cough*

I'm sure Judas/rusty/AlphA or someone from the Linux gang will be along shortly to assist you. Just had to get my 2c in before the intelligentsi arrive.

WAJeff · Post by **WAJeff** » 03 Jan 2008, 14:21

schase wrote:*cough*
Vista
*cough*

I'm sure Judas/rusty/AlphA or someone from the Linux gang will be along shortly to assist you. Just had to get my 2c in before the intelligentsi arrive.

Dammit schase

I gonna tell on you to the mods that you spamming

Im hoping they will be able to help me out.... Havnt seen Judas around in a while though

SBSP · Post by **SBSP** » 03 Jan 2008, 17:55

Umm what you did is like an anti Christ to the christian Linux distro.

It hates it cus its wrong and its allowed to

Sorry man i doubt that you will fix this one.

did you by any chance do a chmod * 777 -R from the root ?
Cus you were tryin to install the application and it kept complaining about the permissions.

So you decided to change all permissions so you dont have to face the problem again ?

Whaaahaaaahahahahahaha!!!!

Reinstall man

If i'm wrong maybe someone can help

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 04 Jan 2008, 07:58

after thinking on this for a while, i must confess to having no easy solve other than reinstall...

permission changes aren't tracked and have no defaults, so there is no manner in which they can be rolled back.

when you say you cannot boot into ubuntu, are you referring to x-server only? are you presented with a login prompt?

SBSP · Post by **SBSP** » 04 Jan 2008, 08:06

rustypup wrote:after thinking on this for a while, i must confess to having no easy solve other than reinstall...

permission changes aren't tracked and have no defaults, so there is no manner in which they can be rolled back.

when you say you cannot boot into ubuntu, are you referring to x-server only? are you presented with a login prompt?

If he did a recrusive chmod 777 from / then he would probably not even be able to log in.

Linux dont like the fact that all files are accesable.

I did this once on a production spam Mail server, I figured its behind a firewall so why not, It took about 5 mins to complete all was fine untill i rebooted,The guy that came to fix it or try to fix it, was stumped and had to re install.

Im sure if you search the net, you will find exactly why linux wont boot if all permissions is changed to R/W

flarkit · Post by **flarkit** » 04 Jan 2008, 08:45

Sadly, I'd also suggest backing up all your data and then reinstalling. I suspect you should've done "sudo cp ..."?

DAE_JA_VOO · Post by **DAE_JA_VOO** » 04 Jan 2008, 09:07

flarkit wrote:I suspect you should've done "sudo cp ..."?

Yeah, or even a sudo nautilus and then using Nautilus to do a simple copy/paste would have done the trick...

EDIT: Don't worry Jeff, i learned this lesson the hard way too. That's the joys of switching moving over to a completely new OS

Judas · Post by **Judas** » 05 Jan 2008, 23:39

I'm afraid all you can do is re-install... As rusty said, the previous file permissions aren't stored anywhere, so you've really got no way of knowing what the correct permissions are.